Nation to Nation

On this episode of Nation to Nation: There’s a story Randy Kakegamick tells about the neglect he faced as a child.

It was late one night and his mom was out so he took off wandering the streets of Ottawa.

A drunk man chased him into an alley and attacked him thinking his bag of white cookies was cocaine.

He was eight-years-old. The Ojibway-Cree man never stopped running until about three years ago.

He was in jail, a familiar place for most of his adult life.

Much ink has spilled on social media about the fiasco involving which office Jody Wilson-Raybould should occupy in Ottawa as a Member of Parliament.

Nation to Nation has a single, and final, thought on this.

On this episode of Nation to Nation: Canada ended up with the shield but not the sword for Indigenous peoples in the new trade agreement that was officially signed in Mexico earlier this week.

That’s how Wayne Garnons-Williams described the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

The sword was a three-part Indigenous chapter: A recognition that Indigenous peoples are original traders, a breakdown of who the inter-tribal traders are and a committee to enforce it.

On this episode of Nation to Nation: The new Indigenous services minister was introduced to the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) this week.

And Marc Miller promised that Canada would compensate children in care in due course.

But Cindy Blackstock, who continues to fight the Liberals before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, still doesn’t trust the government’s track record.

On this episode of Nation to Nation: British Columbia became the first jurisdiction in Canada to formally enshrine the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) into law.

The province’s Lieutenant Governor Janet Austin gave the bill royal assent in a ceremony Thursday morning in Victoria.

Indigenous leaders were ecstatic about the event.

On this episode: The Nation to Nation panel of political experts examine Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s new cabinet going into the minority session of Parliament.

Alberta’s Metis Settlements General Council is in Ottawa.

It represents the only Metis communities that hold land collectively but they have a way to go to get more federal recognition.

On this episode of APTN Nation to Nation: Marlene Carter is a Cree woman from the Onion Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan and she’s been incarcerated since 2009.

A lot of that time has been spent in restraints – sometimes months at a time at Saskatoon’s Regional Psychiatric Centre (RPC).

A lifetime before that, the mother of three boys was sexually and physically abused as a child.

But, today no one appears to know what to do with her.

On this episode of APTN Nation To Nation: Forest defender Paulo Paulino Guajajara was shot dead several days ago by suspected illegal loggers in what has pitted Indigenous people against just about everyone trying to make a buck in the Brazilian Amazon.

But Guajajara’s death shows protecting their territory can come at the highest price as he was shot in the face and his cousin wounded during an “ambush” in the Araribóia Indigenous territory of the Amazon.

It’s essentially put Indigenous people on the frontlines in this deadly fight.

On this episode of APTN Nation To Nation: Every painting tells a story and that’s certainly true of a particular one done by Algonquin artist Janet Kaponicin.

It tells the story of a curse placed nearly 200 years ago on the land of what later became Canada’s seat of government.

Kaponicin tells a story that has been handed down through seven generations of women about a group of Algonquin camped near where the Rideau canal now empties into the Ottawa River.

On this episode of APTN Nation To Nation: The NDP may have finished fourth in the federal election last Monday but is perfectly placed to push for Indigenous rights when the prime minister inevitably comes looking for a deal to prop up the minority Parliament says Leah Gazan.

Gazan was elected in Winnipeg Centre defeating the Liberal incumbent, Robert Falcon-Ouellette, and firmly believes the NDP are the big winners, at least for Indigenous people.